On next hit, Mordekaiser swings his mace with such force that it echos out, striking up to 3 additional nearby targets, dealing his attack damage plus bonus damage. If the target is alone, the bonus damage is doubled.

IMPORTANT:
- Is on-hit, so times with auto-attack
- Does normal AD+20/40/60/80/100 magic damage
- You can pretty much ignore this; only activate it when getting a certain hit
- Will do about 250 dmg to a single target endgame
- Is like sex with a scorpion: you don't want that

IMPORTANT
- Can be cast on other players
- Will give you shield if used on someone else
- Will not grant you kills if used on someone else
- Will not grant you assists if used on someone else
- Will deal about 90 dps endgame
- If used with 2x Sunfire Cape it will do about 170 dps passive

Important
- Focus this on minions for some crazy shield regen
- Does not come cheap early-game, use with caution
- Will deal about 300-350 (pure) damage end-game
- It has a slightly longer range than the indicator shows.

IMPORTANT
- Deals percentage-based damage
- Has no cost, so fire away
- Your minion spawns at the enemy corpse's location
- You can control your pet by alt+right clicking on the destination
- Your pet has both a limited range and duration
- If your pet towerdives a champion, the tower will focus you and not your pet
- Get's the same passive stats of it's original counterpart (including Sunfire Cape)
- Whenever your pet strikes you gain shield equal to 25% it's damage.
- Rylai's scepter affects your minion, making it a controllable slow.
- Combined with Ignite you can ensure kills about 80% of the time.
- This spell cannot be cleansed!

Introduction

Summoner's Rift
Start with . Save all your gold for [item_icon=Mercury's threads]. At around lvl 7 these should be affordable. If by any means you get a very delayed recall grab an along with it. If timed well you can easily pick off a whole side lane. Your next item should be either or .

Proceed to the only build that works on mordekaiser.

Twisted Treeline
Start with , and proceed to the top lane. Your initial priority is to hit level 2 without any casualties on your team.

With both Siphon of Destruction and Creeping Death in your arsenal you can harass without suffering substantial damage, whereas with only siphon you'll lack the steady shield-gain and resistances leading to a quick death.

Mordekaiser has a longer early game on Twisted Treeline than on Summoner's Rift. If possible try to take the top lane all by yourself, placing a by the lizard to prevent any ganks. If this is not possible run in between lanes to farm minions and get a level advantage, slowing down the leveling, but becoming harder to catch.

Your priority should be [item_icon=mercury's threads] whereafter you should take resistances according to your opponents.

As a final thought, think well about how you counter enemy champions. Example: to completely shut down an enemy warwick take Quicksilver Sash since it blocks his Infinite Duress.

State of the game, version 3.0

So Mordekaiser has gone through a remake, a re-build and a slight buff; how does mordekaiser play out right now? What has changed in the past few months?

Mordekaiser's early game has been nerfed: Mordekaiser used to be insane at around lvl 7-8, dealing true damage to a lot of champs once boots were acquired. His ratios have been upped, thus making him even more powerful late game with caster items. Also: his e's shield regen ratio on minion hit has been drastically lowered.

Mordekaiser's Q has become viable: It's become AP dependant+base damage, resulting in a more caster focused build. Don't overestimate it though, it's still worse than morde's W.

Mordekaiser's R ability has been buffed It now instantly nukes for a portion of the targets hp, with a small DOT following it up.

Elixirs have become very costly They upped the price by 50, but wards have been lowered in price. I think their message was: ward more, drink less. But you're a brother, you shall drink whenever you feel like it.

This results in a deviating gameplan compared to a few months ago. Mordekaiser's main role right now is that of a beefy dps/farmer and pusher. He should be the one buying all the wards, pushing all lanes and basically giving the enemy team a very bad day. If needed he can tank just as hard as any other beef (his R actually heals pretty well) and with Force of Nature he has unstoppable pushing power, regenerating in between lanes. His movement speed is quite fast, and because of his weakened mid game one should always take mercury's over sorcerer's shoes. He can no longer pwn mid the way he used to, he can no longer dish out the damage he used to in the early game. So the best thing to do is make him unpredictable and establish map control.

Runes

Guide Changes

Pre season 1 Wrote the whole guide. Switched from Cleanse to Ghost. 29/7/2010 Clarified the building order a bit more.15/8/2010 Major revamp on several sections. 18/8/2010 Continued the changes. Shooting movies nao.18/6/2011 Revamped the outdated builds, explained some things in order to three-punt-nullify my guide.

Mordekaiser Changes

Season 1 Mordekaisers Children of the grave no longer benefits from Spirit Visage, but also no longer gets affected by Ignite.

Skilling Order

Building Order

Summoner's Rift
Start with . Save all your gold for [item_icon=Mercury's Boots]. At around lvl 7 these should be affordable. If by any means you get a very delayed recall grab an . If timed well you can easily pick off a whole side lane. Your next item should be either or .

Twisted Treeline
Start with , and proceed to the top lane. Your initial priority is to hit level 2 without any casualties on your team.

With both Siphon of Destruction and Creeping Death in your arsenal you can harass without suffering substantial damage, whereas with only siphon you'll lack the steady shield-gain and resistances leading to a quick death.

Mordekaiser has a longer early game on Twisted Treeline than on Summoner's Rift. If possible try to take the top lane all by yourself, placing a by the lizard to prevent any ganks. If this is not possible run in between lanes to farm minions and get a level advantage, slowing down the leveling, but becoming harder to catch.

Your priority should be whereafter you should take resistances according to your opponents.

As a final thought, think well about how you counter enemy champions. Example: to completely shut down an enemy warwick take Banshee's Veil since it blocks his Infinite Duress.

Builds

NORMALKAISER 3.0
This is my main build. I rush to get these items ASAP every game. Mordekaiser, being a tank, is very reactionary, but both items cannot be missed. Even when going vs 5x AP you should need a sunfire in there as it serves multiple purposes, and so does FoN. Don't doubt me, just do it hater. Cost: 6420 gold
[builder=Mordekaiser/219afc5c6ba278d2896ce77b3e19645f]

Stats: +300 Health +90 Armor + 25 Health Regen/5 sec.Effect: UNIQUE - 15% Cooldown Reduction and 20% chance on being hit to slow the attacker's movement and attack speed by 25% for 3 seconds.
Active UNIQUE - Slows movement speed and attack speed of surrounding units by 35% for 1 second + 0.5 seconds for each 100 Armor and Magic Resist. 60 second cooldown.Cost: 2925g (600g)Note: I severely underestimated this item. It really can turn the tides of teambattles. If you have enough money endgame, you might consider replacing a single Sunfire Cape with this, but be careful: You will severely lower your damage output by doing so. Oh, and also note how this item slows enemy movement speed, and since different item slows stack this gets a very nice synergy with [item_text=rylai's scepter].

Stats: +450 Health +45 ArmorAura: Deals 40 Magic Damage a second to nearby enemies.Cost: 2510g (700g)Note: This item is essential to last-hitting minions and will greatly speed up your farming speed. In teamfights the damage can easily become considerable. This also has a great synergy with your Creeping Death adding up to 130 passive damage each second to the whole enemy team.

Stats: +100 ArmorEffect: UNIQUE - On being hit by standard attacks, returns 30% of damage taken as magic damage. A Minimum 15 damage must be received.Cost: 2000g (1000g)Note: Hard counter to physical carries, but will not prevent you from dying.

Damage

Stats: +70 Ability Power +60 Magic ResistanceAura: UNIQUE - Reduces the magic resistance of nearby enemy champions by 20.Cost: 2650g (1050g)Note: Grants 20 magic pen to your whole team, be a social Kaiser. It ups your damage, it ups your survivabStats: +20 Ability Power (can become up to 180 Ability Power)Effect: UNIQUE - Your champion gains 8 ability power per stack, receiving 2 stacks for a kill or 1 stack for an assist. This effect can stack 20 times; you lose a third of your stacks if you die. At 20 stacks, your champion's cooldowns are reduced by 15%.Cost: 1235g (800g)Note: If you're running 3/1 go ahead and take this baby. It's definately worth it (especially the reduced CD)

Stats: +20 Magic Penetration +2 movement speedCost: 1100g (750g)Note: These boots make the very cornerstone of mordekaiser damage. It's movement speed+runes+masteries should allow you to outrun practically any champion that doesn't use skills.

Health

Stats: +180 Health (can becom up to 820 Health)Effect: UNIQUE - Your champion gains 32 health per stack, receiving 2 stacks for a kill and 1 stack for an assist. This effect can stack 20 times; you lose a third of your stacks if you die. At 20 stacks, your champion takes 15% less damage.Cost: 1275g (800g)Note: Dual snowball is not to be matched. Ever.

Stats: +770 Health +30 Health Regen/5 sec. (can become up to 1220 HP and 92.5 heath per five seconds after slaying 125 minions)Effect: Permanently gain 3.6 Health and .5 Health Regen per 5 sec per minion kill. Champion kills grant 36 Health and 5 Health Regen per 5 sec. Bonuses cap at +450 Health, and +62.5 Health Regen per 5.Cost: 3135g (1100g)Note: This one requires a lot of thought. The health you gain by taking this is considerable, and it is one of, if not the best survivability item in the game. However: it turns you into a walking meatpuppet. Only take this if your team really needs a tank, and there is none on your team. You can tank, but it is not a preferable role, so think twice before taking this.

Stats: +68 Armor +40 Magic ResistanceEffect: UNIQUE - Revives your Champion upon death, restoring 40% of their Health and Mana. This effect can only occur once every 5 minutes.Cost: 2600g (1200g)Note: If you feel you could use that extra "oomph" in teamfights, or to preserve your snowball stacks.

Stats: +230-400 Health and 11-28 Attack Damage, based on champion level, for 4 minutes.Cost: 300Note: In case you need quick tankyness, or just hate Requiem

Stats: On use, grants +31-65 Ability Power, based on champion level, and reduces cooldowns by 10% for 4 minutes.Cost: 300Note: Always pick this if you have a spare 300 gold, it'll earn itself back in no-time

Effect: Places an invisible ward with 1000 range Magical Sight (see invisible units). Lasts 3 minutes, Max: 3 Stacks.Cost: 150Note: This is usually only acquired in the laning phase to counter a stealth champion. Later on in the game oracle's elixir is considered more vialable.

Laning Partners

You will always want a solo lane. If this is impossible there are a few rules to follow:- Double melee is not a succes.
- Double tank is not a succes.
- Stealthers are not a succes.

That means you'll want a ranged, non-stealth, non-tank champion at your side with preferably a slow.

If you abide these rules on partner selection, there's not much that can go wrong.

Teamplay

Now this is the total package Mordekaiser offers to a team:
- Deal substantial AoE damage
- Mid game tank, late game off-tank.
- Turn 5v5's into 6v4's.
- Deny mid lane.
- Push creeps like a madman.
- Kill off side lanes early game.
- Be a wards and oracle machine.
- Provide an endless stream of harassment.

How-to-team guide:
1. Pump up your shield on minions.
2. Initiate the fight, or go in after your main tank.
3. Focus fire the carry your team has targeted.
4. Use Children of the Grave and get your pet out as soon as possible.
5. Now start dealing insane amounts of damage, keeping up the harassment with your pet.
6. Make your pet towerdive opponents, or simply make it kill off the tower as it's duration wears off.
7. Either retreat or kill off the enemy tower.
8. Profit.

2) This is Baron Nashor. He Gives an UBER buff to a team, you ward this bad boy atleast by 25 and keep it up for the rest of the game. Dont let the other team get this without you fighting them for it.

3) This is a jungler catching ward. Normally a jungler is lowest health at lizard. You see him starting and mid and top can work together and kill him and steal the buff generally.

4+5) River Wards. To a Good Mid these are the best place because it covers when a jungler crosses into your jungle and also alerts you when someone comes into the side bush to try to gank mid.

6) This is the enemy junglers mana...if you bottom and mid go and kick him out everytime he goes for it trust me he is going to have a much more difficult time jungling.

7) Dragon Ward. This ward should be up from 10 mins till around 30 mins. After that point dragon goes down so fast its not worth warding it. You should be getting it as soon as you see it spawn at this point in the game

8) Bottoms Protective Ward

9+10) These wards are informative for the teamfight phase if mid tower hasnt been pushed. Teams will wait and try to initiate from positions where running is a difficult option.

11+12) These are offensive wards. When you are pushing the last two towers in Mid these are really informative, and keep off nasty Fiddle's waiting to ultimate

13+14) The same as 11+12, but are defensive if they've pushed your first tower and your going to teamfight near your tower.

Wards can also be placed in side lane agressive/defensive positions but are normally cost too much gold compared to a character with Clairvoyance, which you should be great with by this point right. These ward locations are also good places to use clairvoyance *wink wink*. Most importantly you really dont need 12 wards up at all times. That would be cool but you really dont need it. Stick with River wards, Dragon and Baron and additional wards varying from game to game.

Q&A

Q:What's the highest score you ever got with this build?
A:31/8/20 in a 45 minute match

Q:You say that you can reach your full build in under 40 minutes. What happens if games last for a full hour?
A:This

Q:Are you a member of the always fabulous always prosperous penta kill club?
A:Yes I am.

Q:Why don't you stack Attack Damage?
A:The only spell that benefits from AD is Mace of Spades.

Q:Why's this guide called Hello Mordy, a Christmas Carol?
A:It's not.

Q:Why do you prefer [item_text=Rylai's Scepter]?
A: It gives you a ranged 6 sec spammable slow, turns your ulti into an 8 sec slow and let's you slow their full team with Creeping Death. What more could you wish for?

Q:Why do you get 2 movement speed Quints and 1 Magic Pen?
A:I wish I could get 3 movement speed quints, but the thought behind this guide is to nullify their defenses ASAP. An average carry has 30 magic resistance. After obtaining Sorcerer's Shoes you have 30 magic pen.

Q:Why not take more magic pen? I heard that your damage output gets increased if you do so.
A:Yes and no. Magic penetration is very powerful, but it has it's limits as Defense penetration is applied in the order:
1-Reduction
2-Penetration
3-%Based Penetration
So to reduce someone with 30 MR to -10 MR you'd need 40 MR reduction. A mix of 20 MR reduction and 20 MR penetration would only bring them to 0 MR and getting 160 MP would still result in 0 MR.

Q:Do you have any other guides?
A:No I do not, since it takes quite some time to write a guide. I do however have champion builds saved to my profile (some taken from others, some made myself.) You can find those at http://leaguecraft.com/users/yoshuawuyts/builds

Mathcraft

For any questions regarding Mathematical calculations please visit Heat n Serve's guide to mathcrafting. It's the only guide out there that delivers a solid amount of truth since Riot hasn't come clean on how they calculate most things.

30 magic penetration
What I try to accomplish first is to gain 30 magic pen. This should allow to neglect the enemies defenses completely. Example: Ashe starts with 29 magic resist on lvl 1 (unruned). I start with 10 magic pen at lvl 1 (runes).
ashe: (30/130)*100 = 23.1% damage reduction.
with penetration applied: ((30-10)/(130-10))*100 = 16.7% damage reduction
That's a whopping increase of 6.4% by just adding runes.
Now let's say I get my Sorcerer's Shoes. This will grant me a bonus 20 magic pen.
30-30=0. ... Just by getting my Sorcerer's Shoes I just had my damage output increased by 16.7%, allowing true damage.
Basically this forces those nifty little carries to invest in Magic Resistance, or else they will be 3-shotted.
If runes are bought (assuming they have 30 base MR): (9*0,94)+30=38.46
Now with 30 magic pen: 38.46-30=8.46 (8.46/108.46)*100=7.8% Magic Resistance.
If you weren't rolling magic pen they'd have a whopping (38.46/138.46)*100= 27.78% magic resistance. Now that's a situation you don't want to find yourself in.

Resistances
Overall you'll want to stack resistances. Building morde as an hp-sack is not what we want. HP sack mordes are unable to kill. In teamfights sack-kaisers are to be ignored. The only use they have is to toggle Randuin's Omen and spam their puny little spells. A resistance Kaiser can take hits but usually brings a wider arsenal of possiblities to the fight (it be increased damage, slows or aoe damage).
So what is our goal here? Knowing at what height we should stop investing in resistances. There is no such thing as getting 100% resistance against anything since they keep diminishing. Let's see how much a single point of resistance gives:
100/200= 50%
150/250= 60%ɉ0.2 rppt
200/300= 66.67% 0.13 rppt
250/350= 71.42% ɉ0.1 rppt
300/400= 75%ɉ0.07 rppt
At around 233 resistance you will effectively block out 70% damage. Likewise someone should have 233 penetration to fully neglect this. I believe that if you combine 70% resistance with Creeping Death not a single champion will be able to seriously harm you (olaf, cho'gath and corki put aside since they deal true damage.)
Any point of resistance after the 233 mark is a wasted point. If you insist on increasing your durability you should seek to increase either via health, spellshields or revive.

Special Thanks to:

Lolwatnaw. For his comprehensive post about champions and the type of damage they do.

Delepitore. For his comprehensive guide on how-to-ward-and-participate-in-the-team.

Cpt. Kangaroo. For one amazing comment making me reconsider my build.

Change Log

Guide Changes

Pre season 1 Wrote the whole guide. Switched from Cleanse to Ghost. 29/7/2010 Clarified the building order a bit more.15/8/2010 Major revamp on several sections. 18/8/2010 Continued the changes. Shooting movies nao.18/6/2011 Revamped the outdated builds, explained some things in order to three-punt-nullify my guide.

Mordekaiser Changes

Season 1 Mordekaisers Children of the grave no longer benefits from Spirit Visage, but also no longer gets affected by Ignite.